Moebius Secrets
by Rostand
Summary: An episode tag for 'Moebius' hence, spoilers for said episode. Some require more adjusting than others.


Author's Note: Episode tag for 'Moebius'. Life for our intrepid time-travellers after they fix the future. I'm far too interested in alternate reality SG-1s. Or, y'know, their robot/teenage clones. I think I'm pretty prompt with this, seeing as 'Moebius' part II only aired yesterday. Yay (and by this I mean boo) for Canada. And I'm missing it again as we speak. I wanted to tape it, too, 'for permanent' as my sister would say. We collect good episodes of all the shows we watch. And I'll stop blathering now. Have fun!

He would never get used to this. Sun scorching across the waving dunes. Sand everywhere, gritty and rubbing, swirling in clouds around his face. He had to admit, the loose, flowing robes were mighty comfortable. The people were genial. But he just didn't think he'd ever really get used to it.

"Jack, come back to bed!" a fuzzy, sleepy voice called from inside the tent.

An almost instantaneous leer sprang across his face as he dropped the tent flap back into place, sunspots dancing before his eyes as he turned. Okay. So there were some things he could get used to very, very easily. Like the curvy blonde snuggled into his desert abode. Her mouth had relaxed, but she still had moments of nerdy social confusion that Jack just found so endearing in his wonderful Samantha. Sam. Who knew love would only find him through means of time travel, wormholes, and alternate realities? But he wasn't complaining.

When Jack and Sam finally emerged from their tent, both respectably dressed but Sam still a little dazed around the eyes – she had a bit of adjusting to do, too – the small Egyptian camp had already sprung to life. They were nomads, Daniel had explained once it became evident that they weren't leaving and were, in fact, stuck in this time and place. Jack has assumed that all nomads did was, in fact, be nomadic. He was up for some aimless wandering. But then, as Daniel had so kindly explained in excruciating anthropological detail, with increasing excitement and wild hand movements, he learned that being nomadic was actually a lot of hard work. And camels had never really been his favourite animals. So, rolling up his sleeves (which immediately flopped back down due to their loose, flowing nature) he waded right in. Jack had bonded easily with these people. He was always gregarious like that. Daniel also seemed to fit in; but this made sense once they had learned some of his personal history. Teal'c seemed a bit out of his depth, but seemed to be adjusting well. Sam – well, Sam just put up a brave face and muddled on through. She was picking up the language far faster than Jack, but he refused to attribute this to her immense intellect (which still rather frightened him) and to the fact that these women chattered incessantly while they worked. Daniel spent a good deal of his time with the women (further reinforcing Jack's original assessment of his . . . ness), sending them all into fits of giggles and batted eyelashes. Jack would be very surprised if he didn't end up married before long.

What exactly did these guys use for shotguns, anyways? Daniel had destroyed the P-90s and handguns after the revolution. They could use those staff weapons, he supposed.

Right now, he had camels to tend to and jovial, half-understood masculine banter to swap.

Daniel watched Jack and Sam exit their tent, his expression unreadable, deliberately blank. For someone who had always been so open, he had developed this skill very quickly in that last few years. He watched them kiss, a goodbye peck that turning into a longer tonsil fest before Sam – dear, sweet, nerdy Samantha, the Samantha he had always wondered existed without the military training – broke away, blushing, and hurried towards the women's section of the encampment. His Sam had never adapted easily to life in a patriarchal society where most of her time would be spent on cooking, cleaning, weaving, and gossiping. Daniel, on the other hand, loved doing all four, especially the gossip. So his Sam had gladly swapped places with him, her short hair giving her an almost masculine look. And since Jack and Teal'c (his Jack and Teal'c) has treated her as an equal, so had the men. It was all rather confusing. He had to do some very fast talking to calm the tribe after they had appeared, like wraiths from the dead.

They most definitely weren't wraiths. They just weren't Jack, Sam, and Teal'c. Not as he knew them. They were nice people, he was sure, but they weren't his. Jack was jocular (more so than usual). Sam was timid. Teal'c was much like the Teal'c-that-was. This Sam Daniel just couldn't see fighting a Mongolian warlord for her own virginity. And this Teal'c didn't own any other facial expression. But it was Jack . . .

Daniel shook his head. No dwelling. Dwelling didn't help. Instead he followed Sam towards the women, a soft smile affixed on his face as he began the daily rituals, nudging Sam along in the right places when she needed it. And thinking. Lots of thinking.

They moved. A lot. From waterhole to waterhole, from marketplace to marketplace. Sam had beamed at him the first time she successfully haggled for a basket of dates with a genial old woman in a bright blue wrap, and he had smiled back. But the smiles no longer reached his eyes. It was hard, much harder than he could have thought. If they had just died and let him be, maybe he could have gotten through this. But not now, when they were standing right before him, but so very different. These people hung on every word as he told them what they – what he had done with SG-1, all the Goa'uld they had destroyed, all the planets they had visited. Thor and Kinsey. The Nox and the Russians. They remembered nothing of it, but were mesmerised by his flying hands and a story-telling style that got better every day. But they still weren't his. It was Sam's linguistic success, her bouncing stride as she flew off to show Jack her prize, that decided him.

He couldn't stay here. Couldn't stay with them.

He made his preparations, first finding a caravan leaving the market the next day. He exchanged a few words with the leader, who had to only look at his face to recognise one of the leaders of the resistance and almost tripped over his own feet to accommodate him. Then Daniel returned to the camp that had been his home for almost seven lonely years and packed his few belongs. His boonie hat, a small reminder of the SGC-that-was, was the only thing from his old life he still carried. Well, not the only thing. The other he carried tucked under his robes all the time. A staff weapon, a 'zat, some spare clothes, and the copious stacks of papyrus covered in very tiny notes to conserve space. Once an Egyptologist, always an Egyptologist. Maybe someday he would bury them and hope they survived to the present, become the next Rosetta Stone. Of course, he would have to collate them and translate them into hieroglyphics so as not to be suspicious. And design suitable booby traps on his tomb.

His lips curled into a smile as he curled them with dusty fingertips, lovingly, caressingly. That was an almost pleasant thought of how to live out the rest of his life. A cranky old scholar. How Jack would have laughed.

Damn. Why did that always happen?

He meant to slip away quietly in the cool predawn, when the sands were still cold from the night and Venus hung over the horizon like a tiny, far-off sun. But something in him decided that he couldn't do that, and all the clumsiness he had thought he had carefully disciplined out of himself came back. He tripped. And fell. Into their basket of metal cooking bowls, which proceeded to spill themselves across the sandy floor, the cacophony climaxing with the typical after-disaster sound of something spinning to a halt.

"Daniel?"

Daniel groaned internally and turned, knowing instinctively that not only would Jack be standing there, fully alert, but he would be naked. And Daniel was right, as he saw the blanket hastily wrapped around a toned and sun-burned abdomen. And a moment later a very rumpled Sam appeared behind him, clad in similar blanket fashion. That just hurt.

"Daniel," Jack intoned again, and it was so familiar that he wanted to cry.

"I have to leave," Daniel said, every last ounce of will forcing his voice to not break. "You three can get along nicely without me, so I think it's time to go." There. Hopefully that was dignified enough. Daniel turned and headed for the flap, hoping against Jack that they would drop it.

"Hey, hey, hey, what's all this about!" Jack demanded, finally catching up to him.

Oh look, I made it all the way to the top of this dune and out of the camp. "I told you Jack, you don't need me any more. So I'm going."

"Daniel, you can't just leave!"

"Watch me."

"Hey, why won't you look at me?" Jack reached out and grabbed Daniel by the arm, hauling him almost painfully around.

"Because it hurts, Jack!" Daniel spat. So much for leaving quietly. "Because it hurts so much. Because you aren't my Jack!"

"Daniel, Daniel, I know I'm not exactly –"

"You used to call me stupid things like Spacemonkey!" Daniel railed, his arm flying up in an automatic wave. "You used to –"

"Daniel," Jack said softly, stepping closer. Daniel retreated a step. "That can't be the only reason you're leaving."

"No, it's not. But you wouldn't know that, or why, or see! See what you can still do to me, Jack?" Oh god, here came the cracking and the dry tears. Why? Why couldn't he just shut up?

"Still –" Jack looked confused. Samantha came scrambling up the dune behind them, her hand automatically going to Jack's arm for support.

"Daniel, why are you –"

"This never happened!" Daniel said, flailing his arms for emphasis. "You! And Sam! It wasn't supposed to happen!"

Jack glanced down at Sam, who looked frightened now. "Daniel, what are you saying?"

"It was you and me, Jack," Daniel said, his shouting all out. His words were soft and crisply enunciated, his voice defeated. "It was always you and me. Together. The two of us." He dug under the neck of his robes and pulled out a pair of dog tags, flashing in the faint light. "I loved Jack. When he died, a part of me that I thought had already been killed twice managed to die again. And I thought I could live through it again, until you came, looking so much like him but feeling so different. And I can't take it any more, Jack. I can't take seeing what was mine become someone else's. Even Sam's. So I'm leaving." He dropped the dog tags back out of sight and turned away, leaving Jack and Sam standing on the dune. He didn't want to see their faces, shocked or disgusted.

So he slipped and slid down the face of the dune, towards the waiting caravan, his mind on papyrus and the long march of history. And as he walked his shoulders straightened and he thought of Jack – his Jack, and only his Jack. Memories of the past and future. Memories that were his alone now.


End file.
